As a developer you are the tailor, with access to configuration-ready suits and the ability to make edits to a suit as needed. You work with your customer, understand their needs, and guide them to the right configuration for their purpose. You help them try on the closest suit possible to what they need, and then you do your finishing work after you’ve met. When your customer comes back, together you try on the fitted suit and hopefully it is exactly what they need at that time. As that customer grows (or shrinks), you can help modify the suit so they get the most life out if it as possible.

What don’t you do? You don’t weave and dye your own fabric. You don’t re-invent cuts or create your own button holes. You don’t make your own buttons. In short, you don’t start from scratch. The result is that suits are made faster and relatively less expensively, and your customer gets what they want.

Agile Developing for the Enterprise Using PaaS

As more businesses and organizations begin to adopt agile methodologies to improve customer responsiveness and rapidly develop applications, it would seem that software tools have to be agile-ready. So far, most of the focus on those agile tools happens to be on the project management and delivery lifecycle phases, but what about the actual development of applications? Developers must examine how application creation tools can best support agile software development as a business strategy.

One example that comes to mind is the development of internal business applications. In the past, it was virtually impossible to build custom, enterprise-grade applications for every department. Now, because the current generation of users is so web savvy, having to deal with hard-coded legacy database applications and spreadsheets is not only ill-conceived and impossible to manage, it can ultimately lead to increases in operating costs and be rife with error.

The primary response from IT organizations has been to decouple the information from the application. Such is the nature of SOA/XML. That’s fine for the IT developer, but completely unusable from a departmental end-user standpoint – the people who have to use the data and face the information management challenges on a daily basis. They still have to rely on an in-house development resource or highly paid consultant to get to that data in a meaningful way that integrates with their work processes.

PaaS can be the ideal solution to solve that problem by making it extremely easy to design, develop, adapt and service web-based applications, while leveraging a comprehensive enterprise-class service environment. It is so easy to build apps that a significant amount of development and changes can be realized in a single meeting or overnight. This gives the user access to new functionality almost immediately. And very savvy users can even make the modifications themselves – simply by changing configuration options – offloading minor development tasks from the coders.

Our new whitepaper “PaaS and Agile Development: The Application Platform for Enterprise Transformation” covers everything a CIO, software product manager, scrum master, or architect needs to know about leveraging PaaS as part of an Agile strategy.

Technorati Tags: agile development, agile manifesto, agile processes, application development, cloud computing, extreme programming, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

SEAL Mobile and Mash-up Micro-Apps are lightweight enterprise applications providing a secure access to on-premise and/or cloud enterprise applications via simple interfaces for common tasks. These are available across various business domains from Supply-Chain, Logistics, Procurement and Manufacturing to Financials, HR, CRM and Performance management.

Their Micro-Apps are delivered to mobile platforms like the Blackberry, iPhone and Google Android.

You can visit them at SAPPHIRE in Orlando, booth #721 for a demo.

If you want to learn how they were able to get to market so fast, you can attend our next Ziff Davis Enterprise eSeminar May 26 at 1PM Eastern.

Technorati Tags: android, blackberry, cloud computing, custom applications, erp, iphone, isv, PaaS, saas, sap, sapphire

We’ve introduced a new library of videos that cover the deep set of features within LongJump’s public and private cloud PaaS. Over time, this library will be extended and refined so that businesses, developers, partners and ISVs interested in LongJump’s SaaS application platform can quickly watch a short video on the features that matter to them most.

You can watch these videos from our website at http://www.longjump.com and by clicking on Video Tour on any of the web pages.

The library covers the platform’s major areas including:

• Application Design
• Development
• Reports
• Access Controls
• Productivity Features
• Personalization
• Release Management
• Distribution
• Maintenance

The videos are also available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/LongJumpVid.

Of course, no video can do what a live demo can, so you can also contact us for a complete walk-thru or sign-up for a free trial.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

Recognized for creating new opportunities in cloud computing and SaaS

SUNNYVALE, CA, April 16, 2010 — LongJump, a leading provider of software that powers Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), today announced that it has been chosen by AlwaysOn as one of the OnDemand Top 100 winners. Inclusion in the OnDemand 100 signifies leadership amongst its peers and game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players. LongJump was specially selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team and industry experts spanning the globe based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

View the complete release here.

Technorati Tags: alwayson, cloud computing, PaaS, saas, software-as-a-service

Many thanks to Adam Day, VP of Business Development at HRAnswerlink for his participation on describing how his firm was able to leverage LongJump’s on-premise PaaS to drive rapid deployment of their new SaaS offerings.

This follows past eSeminars including:

• Cloud Computing, SaaS and Its Impact on Channel Solution Providers

• New Strategies For Building Business Applications In 2010

If you’d like to view this eSeminar and any in the past that cover SaaS, PaaS and Cloud Computing, you can click here for recorded archives.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, enterprise, enterprise applications, isv, IT department, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, software-as-a-service

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, linkedin, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

But there is clear trend towards SaaS and the Public Cloud, especially when businesses require higher productivity for less investment as we move to all things digital and accessible.

From where LongJump sits, we do see Private Clouds still being necessary. That’s why we do have an option for ISVs and partner businesses to fully install our entire platform and host it themselves. There is just some information you can’t put into distribution that even hint at a security compromise, whether it is sensitive financial information, intellectual property, health records, or legal information.

Obviously the attraction of Public Cloud solutions is clear:

• No IT commitment or investment
• Highly scalable and encourages growth
• Recurring revenue
• Remote management

In the end, the question for VARs, MSPs, and solution providers is: “What will my customers be willing to do to save some serious money?”

If you have both, find a partner who can do both.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, crn, hosted software, isv, msp, private cloud, public cloud, saas, var

ChannelWeb has recognized LongJump as one of the 20 Coolest Cloud Companies, positioning it with the likes of Amazon EC2, Google App Engine and Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform. This comes on the heels of last week’s naming of LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya to their list of Top 25 Technology Thought Leaders. As indicated by ChannelWeb,

“LongJump is actively rounding up ISVs to brand and host their own SaaS offerings.”

The channel community is one area where cloud computing can truly be a “sky’s the limit” proposition. With all that experience in IT and application services, VARs, MSPs, and solution providers can realize significant potential creating vertical applications that meet the needs of businesses across the globe.

It is likely why ChannelWeb is actively discussing cloud computing:

“Cloud computing platforms facilitate and ease the deployment of applications into the cloud, limiting the cost and complexity by cutting the need to buy and manage hardware and software. As cloud computing continues to gather steam and more VARs and their clients are looking to design, develop, test, deploy and host apps in the cloud, a robust, flexible platform has become a must-have.”

Technorati Tags: channelweb, cloud computing, crn, isv, msp, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, var

ChannelWeb has named our CEO Pankaj Malviya one of the top 25 Technology Thought Leaders. Specifically, editors were most impressed that:

“Malviya is breaking new ground in the cloud computing market with LongJump, an innovative software company with an end-to-end cloud platform. The LongJump offering is winning raves from solution providers for its flexibility and firepower. It’s also garnered a number of awards including Everything Channel’s XChange Tech Innovator’s Xcellence award and a place in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.”

Says Pankaj:

“I’m honored to be selected as a thought leader with the likes of Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Ray Ozzie and Donald Ferguson. It is a testament to the eventual tide-shift that has emerged through cloud computing technologies for enterprises of all sizes and their critical relationship with channel solution providers and ISVs.”

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, everythingchannel, gartner, magic quadrant, pankaj malviya, xchange

Scott Dahlgren at The VAR Guy posted an article today about how VARs, solution providers, MSPs and others in the IT channel can really capitalize on cloud computing. Specifically he looks at how the PaaS model presents the widest opportunity for the channel to be involved in the cloud. He states:

The current trend is improving time to market and time to revenue which is greatly dependent on how quickly you can build and deploy an application. The opportunity to add value now is not so much in technical competency but in a Partner’s understanding of the business problem that needs to be solved and then building that application in a way that adds the most immediate value to the business.

He also highlights the LongJump partner program:

LongJump launched their VAR program last quarter that provides a development platform, backup, storage, ability to scale easily, network, security, and pre-built applications for $15/user/month. Partners can then develop web applications and sell them for whatever price they choose.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, it channel, msp, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, solution provider, thevarguy, var

The LongJump platform made its debut on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Applications Servers. Incidentally, we were one of only two PaaS-capable platforms to be featured, and the only one which could operate as a PaaS and on-premise. Pankaj Malviya, CEO and Founder of LongJump, had this to say:

“We believe LongJump’s placement in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant demonstrates that PaaS is emerging as a true alternative for enterprises in the application server market. Application platforms in the cloud are ideal for building and delivering innovative enterprise-class solutions that meet dynamic business requirements in record time. LongJump squarely addresses a sizable void for powerful, user-configurable, web-based business applications, without compromising the security and control businesses require.”

This realization by Gartner that PaaS must be included in the conversation when it comes to businesses looking at streamlining application development is something we’ve been talking about for awhile and appreciated.

You can view the press release here.

Technorati Tags: application development, application server, cloud computing, gartner, magic quadrant, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

Steven Burke of ChannelWeb summarized the major topic at this year’s XChange Tech Innovators conference in Las Vegas. Can you guess? Cloud. Specifically how can the solution provider channel leverage the Cloud as part of their suite of product and service offerings.

Says Burke:

“It’s not too early to call 2010 as the year of the cloud for the channel. Solution providers, from the smallest to the biggest players, were getting their hands around the cloud and planning their 2010 cloud sales strategy.”

With more and more solution providers, VARs and MSPs seeing a compression of their revenue and margins, the Cloud can seem like an additional threat because the first instinct is to associate the Cloud with purely virtualization of services with no delivery or implementation requirements. They might be true for some services that are fairly turnkey like email hosting or antivirus, but for other applications, particularly verticalized applications or departmental management applications like CRM or HR, there is a wealth of possibility in providing implementation, process consulting, etc. And some vendors, like LongJump, even offer the ability to whitelabel a SaaS application (or the entire multitenant platform), allow VAR/MSP partners to state their own pricing, resell prove applications, and maintain the relationship with the customer rather than hand it over to a vendor.

Burke also mentions that LongJump won the Most Innovative Technology award at the event for its ability to enable solution providers to deliver SaaS solutions to their customers.

Technorati Tags: channelweb, cloud computing, crn, everythingchannel, msp, saas, Sales and CRM, steven burke, var, xchange

Pankaj Malviya, CEO of LongJump was at SIIA OnDemand in San Jose last week to showcase the LongJump cloud applications platform. While public and private cloud infrastructure may be top mind, the applications that sit in that cloud also need a revolutionary strategy. LongJump presents a streamlined approach to application development that leverages the shared power of a multitenant business platform to minimize time to market and manual effort.

You can watch the short 6-minute video here.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, custom applications, isv, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, siia

Be sure to visit our website to read about how American Mitigation Law Group, a loan modification company in Del Mar, California is helping homeowners keep their homes during the mortgage crisis. We spoke with Nick Hasselwander at AMLG about how they are using the LongJump platform and CRM to build a complete mitigation workflow for their clients in 30 states.

One of the most compelling points Nick makes is:

“Even though we saw the crisis coming, which is why we were in the market, everything was still happening so fast. Because the industry changed and rules were being added, managing processes was difficult. We would refine a process to a point that it was effective, and then have to scrap it because of new requirements. There were no software tools we could acquire that would instill any best practices. The one thing we could rely on was LongJump enabling us to make changes quickly and transition the team effectively as we continued to refine and redefine new processes.”

Nick and AMLG’s story was also featured in Inside Mortgage Finance (Subscription Required) in a story on Cloud Computing.

Technorati Tags: american mitigation law group, cloud computing, mortgage crisis, mortgage industry

GARTNER SYMPOSIUM/ITxpo, Orlando, FL, October 19, 2009 – LongJump, a leading provider of software that powers Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), today announced a value added reseller (VAR) program for its LongJump Cloud Applications Platform from the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. LongJump’s reseller program appeals to solution providers, Managed Service Providers (MSP), ISVs and VARs who want to take full advantage of opportunities in the Software-as-a-Service market, generate recurring subscription revenues and leverage LongJump as a platform for the delivery of ongoing custom products and new service offerings. LongJump’s program lets VARs leverage its powerful, multi-tenant cloud platform to launch their own branded SaaS business, build custom database-driven applications or customize LongJump’s existing CRM offering to meet their clients’ specific needs.

In the face of adverse market conditions, businesses are holding back on big ticket IT consulting projects, forcing VARs and solution providers to shift strategies and focus on smaller IT projects. Now is the time for resellers, solution providers and MSPs to diversify their customer offerings by offering SaaS solutions. Forrester estimates by 2016 70% of all SaaS business applications will be built on a PaaS platform, and that the PaaS market will grow to more than $15 billion in 8 years. For software vendors considering adopting SaaS in the short-term, Forrester recommends leveraging an existing PaaS offering to mitigate losing more time-to-market.

LongJump’s VAR program allows VARs to profitably create solutions for large and small projects and offer those solutions to clients on a subscription basis. Leveraging the company’s PaaS provides a way for VARs to directly participate in a SaaS business model by facilitating rapid application development to fulfill clients’ long tail of IT projects, while also creating new recurring revenue streams to help their own bottom line.

“The LongJump VAR program is designed to give resellers and solution providers a profitable and fast way to tap into new cloud revenue streams,” stated Pankaj Malviya, founder and CEO of LongJump. “We are providing our reseller partners with ready-to-use applications and a flexible PaaS solution to capitalize on for ongoing customer application opportunities.”

Program Features Keep Partners in the Driver Seat

LongJump’s VAR program provides real financial advantages to resellers by 1) delivering recurring revenue streams, 2) ensuring that they own the entire customer relationship, and 3) providing a platform for the delivery of additional business process consulting and automation. The program includes:

• Your Business, Your Branding: VARs can offer their own branded solutions to their customers.
• No Program Fees: VARs can quickly get started by offering SaaS products to their customers.
• Recurring Revenues: VARs earn recurring revenue based on the pricing they set for their customers. Wholesale service price is NOT a percentage of revenue.
• No Hardware or Software to License: LongJump’s multi-tenant platform is fully hosted, eliminating the need for expensive infrastructure and operations costs.
• VAR Customer Control: The reseller will always be the customer’s point of contact. Resellers manage billing and support so that customers are not faced with the hassle of having to deal with different vendors, contracts, etc
• Platform and Product Training: LongJump will provide free training for resellers to certify them on the platform and help them understand how to create and customize client solutions.
• Technical Sales Support: For sales situations where technical expertise can help close a contract, LongJump will work with the reseller as a member of their team to provide answers to customers.
• Sales and Marketing Materials: Partners will be supplied with relevant sales and marketing materials that can be customized, including datasheets, white papers and other documentation about LongJump.

Partners Achieve Success with LongJump

LongJump already counts a number of VARs participating in its program. For example:

• Carlsbad, CA-based Ximix does business with a diverse portfolio of companies in healthcare, military and defense, manufacturing, real estate and financial services and leverages LongJump’s platform having built hundreds of custom applications for HR, billing, employee management, etc. Rob Brown, a Ximix cloud evangelist and consultant, commented, “Good information management is about reducing complexity and PaaS eliminates having to manage a large ecosystem of SaaS vendors. For many organizations, we avoid the cost creep that is associated with more established vendors like Salesforce by developing on LongJump’s PaaS offering, but its real value is its application-agnostic framework which enables delivery of any transactional database-driven application extremely quickly. This means as our clients grow and require changes to their application portfolio, the apps that we prototype and build on LongJump can be extended and reused or translated into new apps on-the-fly — drastically tipping the economy of scale in our favor.”
• Atlanta, GA-based Emery Creek Solutions joined the company’s VAR program to take advantage of customizing its CRM to maximize customer opportunities. “LongJump’s CRM was easy for us to get up and running and customize. It is the most comprehensive CRM product I’ve used,” said Tim Frey, partner at Emery Creek Solutions. “With LongJump, we have been able to integrate our customer information and automate our sales processes, allowing our team to work quickly and more efficiently.”

Pricing and Availability

LongJump delivers enormous value to the channel. LongJump applications and PaaS platform have all the capabilities required for enterprise adoption and is comparable with other PaaS platforms that charge customers from $65 to $200 per user/per month. However, LongJump’s aggressive channel pricing creates a terrific opportunity to channel resellers to start offering branded SaaS solutions to generate recurring revenues.

The LongJump VAR program is available now starting at $15/user/month and includes LongJump’s pre-built and custom applications. Resellers can set the end user pricing.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, forrester, gartner, isv, itxpo, msp, referral, reseller, Sales and CRM, var

Database and technology analyst Ken North examines how Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions help accelerate adoption of the cloud model within organizations. As we have indicated many times ourselves, and Mr. North comes to a similar conclusion:

PaaS solutions have particular appeal for startups, projects with ambitious deadlines, and organizations with a limited budget for capital expenditures. PaaS can remove the capital expenditure roadblock without the burden of diminished functionality. The richness and variety of development environments is one reason the PaaS model has appeal for system integrators and developers, particularly those building web applications. … PaaS has much to offer today to those who are building and integrating systems. PaaS users can create custom solutions and make full use of business process modeling, workflow tools, object modeling, data modeling and packaged applications.

As always, Mr. North’s analysis is very in-depth and is a must read for anyone looking at the varying solutions available for PaaS.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, dr dobbs, ken north, multitenancy, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, techweb

PaaS allows application developers to simply build applications in the cloud, without ever having to worry about hardware acquisition and configuration, software installation, configuration, and maintenance, scalability, availability, backups, recovery, etc. You just sign up and start building, deploy with the push of a button, and pay for your usage as you go.

Bobrowski suggests that enterprises have a real option for cloud computing as some PaaS vendors start offering licensed versions of their platform. He urges enterprises keep their eyes “on the emerging trend of new PaaS and IaaS technologies that are available for licensing within your own data center as you consider how you might transition applications from inside your data center to the cloud.”

He also met with LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya to get some perspective about how our customers are using our installable business applications platform to develop applications faster.

“We are not exclusively a cloud vendor and PaaS on-demand is just one vehicle for our customers to derive value from the LongJump platform,” LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya told us. “In fact, our customers take a movable application approach so they can develop on one instance (our PaaS, for example), test on another (a LongJump instance on Amazon EC2), and publish on yet another (LongJump in a private hosting environment). Our real value is helping to streamline application development and delivery and being agnostic to the application infrastructure. With more private cloud options entering the market, there is also less risk for businesses because they still don’t have to outlay any hardware to develop and test their applications.”

For the complete piece, click here.

Technorati Tags: amazon ec2, cloud computing, enterprise applications, iaas, on-premise, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, private cloud

Bill Ives of theAppGap took an extensive look at LongJump‘s application platform recently. The article looks at how LongJump is able to help businesses quickly build an object model, add processing, reporting, and even extend applications using industry standard development tools such as Java. According to Bill:

I can certainly see the benefit fit of using a platform such as LongJump to create web-based applications. LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and catalog out of the box intelligent objects can reduce the time and cost of developing and delivering data-driven applications. The business building block approach should allow developers and corporate IT teams to reduce the time to market or deployment, since they can bypass the need to repeatedly recreate common business processes and functions, as well as develop basic web functionality.

The complete article is available here.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

Pankaj Malviya Examines How Enterprises and ISVs Can Capitalize on Private Clouds for Their SaaS Applications

LongJump, a leading provider of software that powers Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), today announced that Pankaj Malviya, founder and CEO of LongJump, will be speaking on emerging cloud computing options for business at IDG CloudWorld™ in a session titled, “Salvation in the Private Cloud: Platforms at Your Service.” The session will be held on Wednesday, August 12, from 3:00 -3:45 p.m. at IDG’s CloudWorld conference held at Moscone Center West in San Francisco.

Malviya will examine the growing trend and appeal of “private clouds,” and looks at the advantages of a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution used to develop and deliver web-based applications internally within the company’s own servers and behind its own firewall or on another preferred IaaS environment, such as Amazon EC2. For ISVs, private clouds and PaaS position them to offer new business models from a multi-tenant platform that lets them create SaaS applications faster and reduce development costs.

Forrester estimates the PaaS market will grow over eight years to $15.2 billion.  And Gartner predicts the future of corporate IT is in private clouds.  Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst Thomas Bittman recently advocated that embracing private clouds not only enables corporate IT the benefits of clouds within the enterprise, but also the flexibility to use public cloud computing services as soon as they mature.

“The flexibility and utility of cloud computing won’t be leveraged by businesses until security and control is addressed. LongJump is one of the only proven PaaS providers that is successfully meeting the needs of enterprises and ISVs by enabling the development of world class SaaS applications within the public and private clouds,” noted Pankaj Malviya.

Malviya is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years experience in enterprise software design, development, and implementation for Fortune 500 companies. In 2006, Malviya founded LongJump as an early cloud player that maintains the position of giving companies control of where their applications are hosted. Some industry experts have noted that LongJump’s highly portable approach is aimed at delivering the “Holy Grail” of cloud computing and even calling the platform “Force.com in a box.”  Notably, Gartner recently named LongJump as the only cloud application platform to earn its “Cool Vendor” designation.

CloudWorld will provide a comprehensive look at this emerging technology that is becoming increasingly important to the enterprise for its cost savings, scalability and agile functionality. For more information on the conference, interested parties can visit: www.cloudworldexpo.com.

About LongJump
Based in Sunnyvale, California, LongJump is a service of Relationals Inc., a privately-held, proven provider of on-demand CRM and SFA business applications to more than 400 enterprise companies. LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and catalog of highly customizable, business applications help companies reduce the time and cost of developing and delivering data-driven applications. Its business building blocks let developers and corporate IT teams gain significant time-to-value, since they can bypass the need to repeatedly recreate common business processes and functions. LongJump is the first platform-as-a-service provider to bring robust customization, integration, and powerful functionality to businesses of all sizes, enabling them to quickly design, implement and do further customization in an easy, affordable way.

About IDG World Expo
IDG World Expo (www.idgworldexpo.com) is a leading producer of tradeshows and events for professionals and consumers seeking world-class education, strategic business relationships, and access to industry-leading products and services. IDG World Expo’s portfolio of conferences and events includes Macworld®, Electronic Entertainment Expo® (E3 Expo®), Next Generation Data Center™ (NGDC™), OpenSource World™, and CloudWorld™. IDG World Expo is a business unit of IDG, the world’s leading technology media, research and event company.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, forrester, gartner, isv, on-premise, PaaS, pl, Platform-as-a-Service, private cloud

We produced a video articulating what companies that want to build SaaS solutions in the Cloud need to focus on to successfully deliver applications on the web. For a deeper dive, you can also view our presentation on “The Strategy for Bringing SaaS Applications to Market.”

Both also look at how LongJump enables your business to develop and deliver robust software as a service solutions on our application platform quickly so you can focus on your core business.

Here is the video transcript as presented by LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya.

Are you looking to start your journey to building a SaaS business? Well, in our experience, you can expect to encounter a range of obstacles that can keep you from turning your idea into a lasting business.

For example… You will need a multi-tenant architecture if each customer expects to have a unique experience and their own set of configurations. You will need to address how to manage tenants and bill for services. How do you ensure your architecture can meet your performance and scalability requirements? How will you handle application deployment and updates? Those are just the basics to getting your software-as-a-service business up and running.

As you grow, you may look to expand internationally. What will you need to meet localization requirements? Will you work with partners to add to your solutions and extend into an application ecosystem? And how can you offer built-in SOAP and REST support so other systems can get data from your applications?

These considerations for delivering a complete service are just as important as getting to market. But to meet these challenges, ISVs risk pulling resources away from their core competencies.

To this, we offer you LongJump: the proven multi-tenant platform that enables you to rapidly build, manage and deploy a variety of relational database applications, and the foundation of successful SaaS businesses.

In fact, LongJump is the same underlying platform we used to launch Relationals CRM, which is serving hundreds of enterprises, and our ever-growing LongJump.com on-demand service for departments and small business. Now we make this same proven platform available to you to launch your own SaaS business.

LongJump eliminates the need to design and build entire application architectures from scratch, and instead, provides a comprehensive white-labeled platform hosted on your own servers or on the cloud. So instead of putting your energies on technical challenges, you can focus on your core business, reduce your time to market, and move towards building a complete service.

Creating applications can be as easy as browsing the web. Just start by creating relational data objects in a drag-and-drop web environment that are infused with the common business building blocks every organization needs. Quickly add customizable views, reporting, and form controls. Visually configure business rules and workflow processing, as well as a comprehensive set of administrative safeguards. If you need deeper functionality, use our Java API and rich developer toolkit to add custom code. LongJump also provides the application lifecycle tools including packaging, release management, even translation and localization – all in a complete solution that provides high performance, scalability, and security.

The result? Full-featured enterprise applications that are built in a matter of weeks instead of months. LongJump can help deliver solutions to market faster, reduce complexity and save on resources.

There is one more important advantage. With LongJump, you own your customers. You control the relationship, where your business solutions are hosted, SLAs, pricing, and when to release new updates to your customers.

When you combine our rapid application development capabilities and rich feature set with the unprecedented platform control, LongJump truly is the Platform at Your Service.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, hosted software, isv, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

Gartner is tracking the hype around Cloud Computing in their latest report “Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing, 2009″ and cloud computing’s path towards mainstream acceptance. In particular, it looked at APaaS (Application Platform as a Service) and suggests that it is a transformational technology that is only 2 to 5 years from being adopted by mainstream IT while its initial penetration is less than 1%.

According to Gartner, “application platform as a service (APaaS) is a development and deployment environment for cloud-based applications, offered to IT organizations as a service.” Businesses will likely need to rethink their perspective on applications, as Gartner also states that:

APaaS is a part of a fundamental and discontinuous change in the application platform market. It is part of a larger SaaS and cloud-computing phenomenon, all amounting to one core change — the transition from IT solutions that are conceived, deployed and managed under the control of an enterprise IT department to IT solutions that are applied and composed by the enterprise, but executed and managed by expert third-party providers. It is a step toward greater industrialization of IT, to predictable, dependable, professionally managed, plentiful and agile information resources.

Gartner estimates that most IT organizations are or will in the next five years become partly dependent on SaaS-style software. Some may begin developing their own custom applications on APaaS leading to a change in IT jobs, organizations and budget allocations.

In a separate hype cycle report “Hype Cycle for Application Infrastructure, 2009,” Gartner also looked into application infrastructures. There it examined SaaS/Cloud-Enabled Application Platforms, also a transformational technology due to make its mainstream impact in 2 to 5 years. Gartner describes SEAP as a software-as-a-service (SaaS)-enabled application programmable platform for the development and deployment of custom applications that is specially designed to support SaaS-style applications. SEAP is inherently multi-tenant and is designed to provide a complete platform for ISVs to develop their own suite of SaaS applications.

Technorati Tags: apaas, cloud computing, gartner, PaaS

China Martens of the 451 Group provided an in-depth Market Insight Service report discussing LongJump and its potential as a PaaS provider inside and outside the corporate firewall. The 451 Group also provided a comprehensive look at where LongJump is in relation to other cloud computing companies and a fairly complete review of the company’s history and trajectory from SaaS provider to offering a multi-tenant application platform for service providers.

LongJump is keenly aware of the challenges it faces in attracting enterprises and ISVs to opt for its PaaS as they take a leap away from Java and .NET and into cloud app development. It’s at the start of what is likely to be a lengthy wooing process and points to its first five ISV customers as a good start in a matter of months. We see LongJump having more stability than some of its pure-play rivals, given its steady-as-it-goes CRM business, and expect it to successfully weather the likely approaching consolidation of small PaaS providers.

In addition, the report states the value opportunity for ISVs:

Companies of all sizes are eager to develop their own SaaS/cloud applications, and some will be particularly interested in the levels of control over branding and deployment that LongJump offers in some of the versions of its platform.

If you are a subscriber to The 451 Group’s research, you can view the complete report here. Access is also available as a trial, or if you would like to receive a copy of the report, leave a comment on this post or on our Twitter feed and we’ll contact you.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, customer relationship management, isv, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, private cloud, saas, software-as-a-service, the 451 group

Michael Coté, one of the analysts at RedMonk talked with LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya about platform-as-a-service on the cloud.

He writes:

Back in February, LongJump started providing their platform to ISVs packaged to be used as a private PaaS, where “private” means “run on your own,” just as “private cloud” does. That is, these ISVs would use the LongJump platform to develop and then sell SaaS applications… Since February 2009, they’ve had 5 ISVs sign up, each creating of delivering SaaSes with LongJump in very narrow industries like electronic equipment maintenance, HR, and drug trial management.

Michael and Pankaj also discussed the current trend for PaaS providers towards delivering what developers need vs. what the industry is providing.

One of the more interesting statements from Pankaj was that development shops were finding the lack of traditional (to use my modifier) ALM (application lifecycle management) in PaaS development annoying. Folks like Force.com – and the wider “cloud” world” – the conceit goes, don’t provide enough hooks to fit into the software development process that people are used to. The thinking is that there’s a cultural mis-mapping between how people want to develop software for the cloud and how the cloud wants (if only by omission of other options) people to develop software. Bringing up the specter of ALM-weakness is a good ploy and segmenter: if you know what ALM means, you probably like it, and if you don’t know what ALM means, you’re probably not worth selling to.

To read the complete article, click here.

Technorati Tags: alm, application lifecycle, cloud computing, developers, isv, PaaS, saas

James Maguire over at Datamation listed his seven top cloud computing acquisition targets: companies that are “desirable choices” for the “giants” of the industry. Among his targets, Maguire includes IaaS provider GoGrid, cloud enabler Enomaly, storage service provider Vaultscape, cloud manager RightScale, virtualization appliance provider AppZero, application manager Elastra, and our very own application platform LongJump.

It’s an interesting “fantasy league” piece and we find it more flattering than serious about being a target. After all, it is nice to be desired or at least desirable.

And he offers on one of the more concise descriptions of LongJump we’ve seen in awhile:

Among other uses, Longjump is leveraged by developers who want to bring to market an extensive multi-tenant application, without building their own platform. (Think, for instance, of the way that Salesforce’s Force.com offers a development platform.) So ISVs and other service providers can use Longjump to sell SaaS offerings.

In other words, Longjump is a Platform-as-a-Server (PaaS) provider. Or, more accurately – warning, here comes deep jargon – it’s an APaaS, an application-platform-as-a-service play. This is because the Longjump solution offers a virtualized application development platform.

While there is nothing wrong with a bigger company using over the right technology to make a mass push, there isn’t that much acquisition activity lately in the cloud space that we’ve seen. Part of the reason may be that many of the larger players are looking at the entire cloud market, and will likely play in the traditional parts of cloud computing first. The first acquisitions will likely be in the infrastructure based virtualization and management solutions or point solutions that fill a gap, then the platforms. But because a platform like LongJump has such broad appeal with ISVs and enterprises alike, we have just as strong a chance at making an impact through partnerships and deals as we would through being acquired.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, datamation, isv, james maguire, multitenancy, PaaS, saas, software-as-a-service

The recording from last week’s webinar on Developing and Deploying SaaS Applications featuring MySQL and SIMCO Electronics is now available. The webinar discussed many aspects of building a SaaS business including how to get to market faster without significantly adding a lot of investment and resources. It also discussed many aspects of readying SaaS applications in the public cloud as well as on-premise and private clouds.

The webinar covers the complete application lifecycle for a SaaS deployment including:

• Data Modeling and Application Development
• Test and Release Processes
• Deployment into Public and Private Clouds
• Publishing and Version Management
• Partner Enablement and Ecosystem Building
• Platform and Application Upgrades
• Establishing Application Portability
• Billing and Tenant Support

To view the webinar, go to http://longjump.com/mysql. If you are not a MySQL registered user, you will have to sign up to view the recording.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, multitenancy, mysql, saas, simco, software-as-a-service, sun mic, sun microsystems, webinar

LongJump will be a featured exhibitor at the Sun JavaOne conference this week at Moscone Center in San Francisco. We’re located in the Cloud Zone at Booth 511. Be sure to stop by and say “Hello,” if you’re going to be there. We’ll be demoing some new upcoming business and developer functionality that we think really changes the game when it comes to web-based application platforms.

The Pavilion hours are:

• Monday – 3PM to 7PM (with a Reception from 6 to 7PM)
• Tuesday – 11:30AM to 7:30PM (with a Reception from 6 to 7PM)
• Wednesday – 10AM to 4:30PM
• Thursday – 10AM to 2PM

We also have 2 free full conference passes (worth $2000 each) that we will give away to the first two people who sign up for a free trial account. Just go to our registration page and for “How did you hear about us” type in “JavaOne Blog Post.” Sorry! Only the first two responders can get the passes.

If you are late to the game, you can always sign up for the Pavilion Only pass at the JavaOne Registration page.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, developers, java, javaone, sun

Gartner analysts Yefim V. Natis and Robert P. Desisto produced the first comprehensive research note on LongJump’s Business Applications Platform with some key insight for those looking to take advantage of online and on-premises based PaaS. They take an honest look at the opportunities and challenges we face with our platform, but are buoyed by our current success so far.

LongJump is starting this expansion on a promising note — even at this early stage, it is already referencing two ISV customers poised to go to production with their applications, built on LongJump BAP.

Yefim and Robert also did an excellent job summarizing how to choose the right platform for the goals of your business:

The company took this direction in response to requests from prospects, and, in doing so, responded to the reality of the multiple patterns and reasons why organizations choose cloud-style application platforms:

• Many small and midsize user organizations and small ISVs are attracted to productivity and low cost of the cloud platform development (these prospects are served by the LongJump On-Demand service offering).
• Many large user organizations are attracted to the productivity of the cloud application platform environment, but insist that their data must remain on-premises (these prospects will be best-served by the single-tenant version of the new LongJump BAP).
• Many large ISVs wish to offer business applications as a service, but demand full in-house control and ownership of the underlying application platform (these prospects will be best-served by the multitenant version of the LongJump BAP).
• Some large user organizations are looking to build private cloud services in-house (these prospects also will be best-served by the multitenant version of the LongJump BAP).

Ultimately, while we know we have a golden product on our hand and that there is a real market need, our own execution will determine our level of success. So far, however, the signs are positive.

Gartner subscribers can log in and read the complete report here.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, gartner, multitenancy, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

Gartner has named LongJump one of it’s Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing System and Application Infrastructure for 2009. Below is an excerpt of the report available to Gartner research subscribers:

Why Cool: LongJump is a cloud application infrastructure service provider delivering an application-platform-as-a-service (APaaS) offering. The company also has a history as a CRM vendor and offers a solution called “Relationals” (also the name of the parent company) that is delivered as a cloud application service.

Its Business Application Platform, branded as LongJump, is similar in concept and origin to Force.com’s underlying salesforce.com CRM application. LongJump is a APaaS cloud platform provider that stands out. It offers a runtime environment and a multitenant development environment, and it supports the creation of multitenant applications. It also offers multitenancy configuration options that allow the user to store data in a common multitenant database, one tenant database instance that is dedicated to the user or in a mixed multitenancy model. The service offers a visual development environment and uses Java as its programming language. LongJump also offers a range of delivery options. In addition to the cloud computing service, the company supports hosting of its environment on third-party infrastructure (for example, Terremark Worldwide data center, Amazon EC2/Amazon Simple Storage Service [Amazon S3] or installation as software in an enterprise data center).

Who Should Care: IT managers who are looking for flexible on-premises and off-premises deployment options using a business-oriented platform will find LongJump’s approach useful.

You can read the complete press release here.

Technorati Tags: app, cloud computing, cool vendor, gartner, multitenancy, PaaS

From ComputerWorld’s Mark Everett Hall (which includes an interview with LongJump customer NES’s CTO Izak Joubert)…

Get cloud tools, but forget the cloud
“(Joubert) wanted an application platform that let him quickly create new services without having to update complex database schemas. Joubert evaluated Force.com, App Engine and other cloud services, but settled on LongJump… According to Joubert, LongJump cuts out all of the “building block” work in app dev for his team. As a result, his current development project, which would have taken 18 months using .NET, will be wrapped up after three and half months.”

From CNet’s Charles Cooper…

LongJump to foster private clouds for corporate IT
“Private clouds… typically offer stronger security and reliability and are thought to have special appeal to IT managers keen on keeping their use restricted to company employees. LongJump, which sells an on demand enterprise applications platform, is licensing technology that will let IT managers build apps on a cloud platform as a service and keep local control of their data.”

From ZDNet’s Phil Wainwright…

LongJump puts PaaS on-premise
“In a move that will horrify purists but bring a smile to the face of many conventional ISVs desperate to launch SaaS offerings of their own, platform-as-a-service provider LongJump is today making its platform available as customer-installable licensed software… In my view, LongJump’s hybrid offering plugs a gaping hole in the market today, both for ISVs and for enterprises. No conventional software vendor offers a fully equivalent hosted PaaS alternative to its on-premise platform.”

From InfoWorld’s Tom Sullivan…

LongJump Puts SaaS Inside IT Shops
“By installing the software in-house, IT shops can take control of otherwise hosted functions, such as multi-tenancy, application delivery, and portability… Likewise, ISVs and SaaS providers can use LongJump’s Business Applications Platform to add more features and capabilities to existing services.”

From Paul Miller of The Cloud of Data…

LongJump embraces private Clouds with new licensing model for Business Application Platform
“Business users are able to take a degree of control over their own application needs, whilst reassuring the CIO and IT Team that everything is running on top of a single set of secure infrastructure over which they have control.”

From Markus Klems of Cloudy Times…

Control the Cloud: Licensing LongJump
Enterprise and ISVs now have control and have a choice to take a proven application platform and install it internally, within their corporate firewall or private cloud, without worrying about compliance, security, or confidentially issues.

Technorati Tags: charles cooper, cloud computing, cnet, computerworld, infoworld, mark everett hall, paul miller, phil wainwright, saas, software-as-a-service, tom sullivan, zdnet

LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) product for on-demand application creation, has been selected as a finalist by the editors at Webware.com, a CNET site, for the 2009 Webware 100 Awards in the category of Infrastructure and Storage. In each of the Webware 100 categories, there are 30 finalists, and from that list will include 10 winners selected by the general public.

Voting ends April 30th. All the winners will be announced on May 19.

To vote, click here.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, cnet, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, rafe needleman, webware

Sunnyvale, CA, Tuesday, March 31, 2009 – LongJump, a leading provider of software that powers Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), today unveiled that its LongJump Business Applications Platform can be licensed for use within an enterprise’s data center or licensed by independent software vendors to build and host their own high performance, scalable, multi-tenant Software as a Service (SaaS) applications.

The LongJump Business Application Platform will appeal to two market segments seeking more control and faster time to market benefits. The first will be enterprises that want the capabilities of a PaaS for custom application development but require more control of the data, such as those dealing with government and civil agencies, financial and compliance processes, and health and patient related information. The other is Independent Software Vendors and Service Providers that want to launch new, branded SaaS offerings but realize that developing a comprehensive, multi-tenant platform can be cost prohibitive and limits how quickly they can get to market and generate revenues.

The Emergence of the Private Cloud

Corporate IT has long sought a quick way to visually assemble information management applications for their divisional users. One catalyst is the acute recession that has forced many companies to slash budgets and require IT to cut costs and increase efficiencies within their departments and data centers. LongJump’s Business Application Platform approach improves corporate IT productivity by helping them build a “private cloud” that provides a common foundation for building custom applications which run securely behind their own firewall. LongJump also provides a unified interface, integrates with business data and systems, creates dynamic transactional applications, and easily handles the complex relational information architectures.

According to David Cearley, VP and Gartner fellow in Gartner’s Web and Cloud Computing service, “Just as in the early days of the Internet, the cloud definition is best-suited to include a public cloud (external, like the Internet) and private clouds (internal, like intranets). Private clouds will be used by companies that do not want to have their IT-related services available to external customers but that do want to leverage the delivery and acquisition model the cloud enables.”

With its new offering, LongJump delivers the most flexible alternative for corporate IT looking to leverage all the benefits of rapidly building applications in cloud platform as a service, but within their own premises. In highly regulated industries such as healthcare or finance, information security and compliance are paramount and keeping local control of their information is an absolute necessity.

“Our business is about using our financial expertise to deliver a great customer experience,” says Dan Yoder, Chief Operating Officer at NES Financial. “Technology is an important part of our business model; it’s an enabler for service delivery. However, because of the nature of the transactions we handle, it’s important that NES Financial have control of the platform and information. It makes sense for us to implement a comprehensive applications platform approach for bringing new financial services to market by leveraging the best technology platform we could find that would help us do that. We found LongJump to be that solution.”

A Multi-tenancy Platform for ISVs and Service Providers

Even companies that offer hosted applications today realize that the ever increasing requirements to add more features and platform capabilities stretches their organization by increasing costs, demands for specialized IT developers, and risk as complexity rises. ISVs and Service Providers know that SaaS offerings represent a great revenue growth opportunity for them but they need to accelerate their time to market with their solution, preserve their branding and user experience uniqueness and differentiation, and reduce costs of delivery so they can maximize profitably.

To many ISVs, assigning their customer to a third-party PaaS provider presents too much risk, especially when they become subject to the PaaS providers’ delivery services. ISVs need to control the service delivery – where they host the platform, manage the service levels they deliver, and enforce their own operational policies for their customers. They also want to have more control over how they price their service offering – as high or as low as their business deems appropriate. They want to remain the customer’s main contact for the service offering – from end to end.

“Before we made our selection, we evaluated several CRM vendors, including some well-known competitors to LongJump. We felt that not only did LongJump go the extra mile to understand our unique business needs, but they also provided the most flexible application framework platform to address the complex business needs of an entrepreneurial company with global mindshare,” stated Robert Peake, Chief Information Officer, of The David Allen Company. “The functionality of their offering helped us realize the vision of how to optimize our business processes over time. We’re looking forward to a long and successful relationship with LongJump.”

LongJump’s Proven Platform Removes Hurdles and Delivers Full Control

Enterprise and ISVs now have control and have a choice to take a proven application platform and install it internally, within their corporate firewall or private cloud, without worrying about compliance, security, or confidentially issues.

• Control of Delivery Options: The LongJump Business Applications Platform gives businesses multiple deployment options to choose from in deciding how and where they want their platform to run. So whether Hosted, On-Premise, or run by LongJump’s professional Managed Services, businesses ¾not the platform vendor¾ now have full control of their customers, data, and applications, while avoiding vendor-driven policies, updates, changes and lock-in. Companies have broad flexibility to decide how to deploy their licensed LongJump platform; they could opt to deploy a private, behind-the-firewall instance, or use a virtualized hosting provider like Amazon EC2. Companies can choose to outsource infrastructure or use existing internal infrastructure.
• Control of Multi-Tenancy: It’s critical to any SaaS offering that the underlying data model supports multi-tenancy. This is the architecture that virtually partitions each account to serve multiple customers from a single shared instance of an application while enabling every account can have its own personalized experience. LongJump’s patent-pending, multi-tenancy Business Application Platform provides businesses with several multi-tenancy configurations to meet their varying requirements, including: Multi-Tenant/Single Database, Multi-Tenant/Multiple Database, and Mixed-Tenancy, supporting both models simultaneously.
• Control of Application Portability: More than ever, businesses require flexibility and options because business conditions can change overnight. What made sense to host in the cloud at one time might need to be hosted in another environment in the future. With LongJump, the applications businesses create are portable; hey can be developed in the cloud and moved to another LongJump deployment in one’s datacenter or with another hosting provider. Businesses can benefit from multiple delivery options because the application structure, rules workflows, views, dashboards – everything that makes an application unique – can be packaged and moved.
• Control of Release Management: Even though PaaS is novel, the way companies develop software is not. For compliance, quality and control reasons, companies follow the industry standard develop, test and release methodology. The LongJump Business Application Platform enables companies to create development, staging and production instances, and assign different development roles to each instance. Software releases are packaged and released to each instance until it has been approved for production release. This removes a barrier to software development inside the enterprise and enables development teams to productively work the way they always have. Corporate IT can also have a certified catalog of applications that are available for internal users to subscribe and use. LongJump’s flexible deployment also enables businesses to selectively update their clients to new applications, rather than forcing all clients to move at once to new software.
• Control of Branding: Service Providers or ISVs that license LongJump can fully customize the user interface to maintain their branding and user experience. With full branding control Service Providers and ISVs know that from the moment a customer logs in to when they log off, they will see only their company’s branding creating.

“Until now, companies have not had a PaaS solution that gives them the full control over how and where they choose to run their applications, data and customer information. Our new Business Applications Platform was designed to address the requirements that our customers and prospects were asking for, and we’re very pleased that LongJump has stepped up to the plate to fill a void in the market,” noted Pankaj Malviya, founder and CEO of LongJump.

Pricing and Availability

The LongJump Business Application Platform is available now for Licensing by Enterprises, Software developers and Service Providers. Call 800.886.9028 for pricing details based on system configuration options.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, david allen, david cearley, gartner, isv, multitenancy, private cloud, saas

LongJump, along with companies like Akamai, AMD, AT&T, Cisco, CSC, EMC, IBM, Red Hat, SAP, Sun Microsystems and VMWare, proudly joins the Open Cloud Manifesto, the first step in defining vendor-neutral interoperability standards for cloud based platforms.

The manifesto defines cloud computing as:

• Scalability on Demand
• Streamlining the Data Center
• Improving Business Processes
• Minimizing Startup Costs

It also lists the challenges of adopting cloud computing in real-world business environments including:

• Security
• Data and Application Interoperability
• Data and Application Portability
• Governance and Management
• Metering and Monitoring

The goals of the manifesto is to promote:

• Choice
• Flexibility
• Speed and Agility
• Skills

And as cloud computing matures, there are several key principles that the manifesto hopes to address to ensure the cloud is open and delivers the choice, flexibility and agility organizations demand. We are eager to work with other cloud providers to ensure that the challenges to cloud adoption (security, integration, portability, interoperability, governance/management, metering/monitoring) are addressed through open collaboration and the appropriate use of standards. The goal for vendors should be to not use their market position to lock customers into their particular platforms. We also recognize that all platforms must try to adopt existing standards wherever appropriate while also helping to define new standards that promote innovation.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, cloud manifesto, open cloud

The gang at CS Techcast, a podcast by Consortio Services, talked with the CEO of LongJump, Pankaj Malviya, about Platform as a Service to get the scoop on cloud computing trends for business. They discuss the adoption of cloud computing platforms within corporate IT teams, and how PaaS provide a point in evolution for developers to create enterprise applications in the cloud. Pankaj also discusses how LongJump is one of many platform tiers within cloud computing. The interview also examines how PaaS changes IT’s perspective to evaluate their focus in their organizations in regards to cost savings, security, and capabilities inherent in the platform they build on.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, IT department, PaaS

First, let’s talk “stuff.” If you mean by data, absolutely. As Facebook’s recent stumble has indicated, customers should be able to freely move their content. In fact, any application platform should have published APIs that are enable you to migrate data in and out of the system. And their code-based development should support industry standard syntax and logic like Java so at the very least, you can migrate custom logic and processing. But if you mean the applications themselves, which you could argue is the valued piece, that is going to take awhile.

Applications are a combination of data structures (or data models), processing, presentation, a range of interaction that works in concert with the existing platform. As such, every platform vendor has ways of adapting those structures to help businesses leverage as much of the pre-built platform as possible. For PaaS providers, the application modeling and framework are part of their magical sauce, often uniquely optimized for their operating environment, mixed with a large dose of customer requests, and added to that many late night hours of ingenuity. Why? Because there is no all-encompassing platform yet, but each step takes us closer.

Alan Zeichick of SD Times has a more sensible response to issues of standardizing the cloud.

Standards, hastily enacted, can stifle innovation. Cloud computing is in an early experimental growth stage. Sure, we have some well-entrenched early success stories, such as Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com, but it would be a potential tragedy to allow the early work of three companies to be codified as standards. We need time for their cloud offerings to shake out for a few years. We need time for new players to enter the market with new technologies – and new ideas. We need time to broaden the base upon which the standards are made to go beyond commercial interests.

To add to Alan’s point, as we build our platform, our job is never done. Companies are finding more and more uses for LongJump and with each new use comes a handful of new requirements — sometimes involving a change to our modeling and framework. It’s exciting because it’s making our platform richer, more robust and more sophisticated with every update.

If you asked us today to adhere to a standard, we would say: “for what… and whose?” It’s not like millions of companies are jumping online creating applications and abandoning their traditional architectures. At this point a cloud standard would be like asking companies like us to band together to set rules and speed limits and street etiquette before we’ve reached escape velocity. Yes, it’s safe, but completely impractical.

When WiFi was in its early stages (or the Internet for that matter), standards came about when adoption became wider. Adobe held PDF until it ensured that everyone could read it. HTML is still changing as new browser technology is introduced. You want standards? Help improve adoption of these platforms and lobby for the changes that will make them interoperable. Don’t hang up projects based on interoperability first.

And if you’re worried about lock-in, pick an application platform vendor that is willing to work with you on those issues. Talk to them. Give them a chance to address those issues, one-on-one. It’s still early and you can help define the platform you need. And that is better than any standard.

Technorati Tags: application development, Applications, cloud computing, Platform-as-a-Service, standardization

SaaS solutions have been around for going on 10 years now and the time is right to see broader and deeper adoption of this approach to application development and utilization. Lower risk processes like sales, marketing and HR have provided the first set of users to benefit from shorter implementation times, easier to use applications and functionality that is perpetually kept up to date. Now that enterprises are faced with doing even more with even less, SaaS should be considered as a replacement more mission-critical internal business processes as well as customer facing applications. By all means grieve, but know that SaaS has been waiting patiently for you since the day you first met. She’s grown as platform and so have your needs.

The traditional technology adoption cycle has just received a jarring inflection point kick in the pants. Typically new technologies move through a predictable path from early adopters to market laggards the same way almost every other commodity introduced into the marketplace. It is a challenging cycle that many technologies fail to overcome (does anyone remember bubble memory and hand-held scanners?) but fairly predictable none the less. According to Geoffrey Moore in his book, Crossing the Chasm, each stage along the way requires certain strategies and tactics that increase the likelihood of success.

Assessing the Grieving Process

The last few months have dramatically changed the landscape globally and everyone will be looking at everything they do from a different perspective. We are just now getting out of the denial phase of dealing with this crisis and heading smack into anger over how this all happened and happened so quickly. If this path is continued, bargaining will ensue and that means evaluating what can be done differently to survive in the new economic reality. From an organizational perspective that means looking at every cost associated with everything to see if it can be done away with or done more cheaply in another way (saas starts looking better for a broader role in the business.)

Without this shock to the system the status quo would have been maintained because there would not have been a compelling reason to change what was already in place. Companies do not experience depression, the next phase of coping with a tragic event, even though the people that make up an organization can and often do experience it quite profoundly.

So that leaves acceptance of the fact that a bad thing has happened and the only choice is to adapt or die. Since death of an organization means serious economic disruption to all concerned, adapting to leaner and flexible processes is the only viable choice. These types of changes are always talked about in an organization but ultimately there is little motivation to go through painful change when everyone feels like the ship is generally going in the right direction.

While SaaS and cloud computing are not a panacea, it does offer organizations the ability to get in, get up and get running more quickly and cost-effectively than traditional software applications. While the TCO debate continues over whether saas is cheaper with larger user populations over a long period of time, there is one major component that is overlooked when calculating the benefits of saas. Continuous upgrading of a SaaS platform means a company never has to go through an upgrade or deal with the incompatibilities so-called suite product offerings.

The reality of SAP and Oracle’s products is they are a mixture of legacy code bases from the companies they purchased over the years. So adding a configurator to your CRM system means a whole new implementation with business disruption and resource drain to do the implementation. Further, if the configurator gets an upgrade there is no guarantee that it will work with your existing versions of opportunity management and demand planning. This is why so many companies are running customer support systems that are 2 years past the last upgrade and in numerous cases outside standard support from the vendor. It’s also why SOA has become a mantra in many IT circles.

The Time to Move On

Today everything must be reevaluated with more and more organizations looking at their legacy systems and transitioning them to the cloud. They will be able to do it more quickly with less money and maintain the applications with fewer people. In addition they will be able to react more quickly to changing market requirements and even globalize operations to take advantage of lower labor costs or access to new market opportunities. It is time to realize that building a SAS 70 II compliant data center is better left to those who do that sort of thing for a living. Likewise, it is time to acknowledge that the lower levels of the software stack have commoditized to a point where there should be little or no need for a staff of database architects and programmers, no matter where their located, hammering endlessly at an attempt to hone the perfect application to keep the business running. Situational, composite applications that adhere to enterprise conditions and dynamics and are turned around in days rather than months are the new new things.

2009 will be a watershed year for SaaS because the cost of maintaining the status quo is no longer sustainable in the face of seismic economic changes. The organizations that will survive, or even thrive, going forward are the ones whose systems don’t prevent them from making the necessary changes to their business model or operating practices. All the talk of building an agile enterprise will be put to the test this year and cloud offerings will be one of the key enabling technologies that will increase the likelihood of success.

There is life after traditional legacy applications in the enterprise and it’s time for both you and SaaS to go forward together into this new life.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, crossing the chasm, database, geoffrey moore, IT department, IT projects, IT silos, legacy applications, saas, Sales and CRM, soa, software-as-a-service

Among the topics they discussed were LongJump’s bootstrapped roots, the software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) industry, cloud computing as a whole impact on enterprises and businesses.

To listen to the complete interview, along with Steve’s interviews with Court Cunningham, the CEO of Yodle and Daren Tsui from MSPOT, click here.

Technorati Tags: bootstrapping, cloud computing, innovators radio, PaaS, pankaj malviya, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, software-as-a-service

So how hard could it be for those same service providers to deliver network-based apps, be they simple things such as e-mail and hosting or complex applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management? The answer is, it turns out, pretty hard. But that doesn’t mean that carriers have — or should — give up on delivering software applications via their networks. It just means they have to be smarter and savvier, even as the types of services and apps that can be delivered via the network cloud are rapidly proliferating — from relatively simple messaging and security services to full-blown virtualized computing environments that can be “rented” by the month or hour.

I couldn’t agree more with this. Service providers have a maturation process they will need to go through to become software distribution channels. Since they are primarily geared towards an SMB market, they will require ready-to-go solutions that have immediate, meaningful impact, yet be able to take the shape of the businesses they are trying to serve.

For LongJump, we’re certainly trying to lay some groundwork in this area. LongJump, has partnered with service providers in some instances, including Singapore Telecom and Jamcracker, to deliver a broad range of platform-based application services to businesses.

“Every ASP application needs to have the ability to be customized; there isn’t a single customer willing to take a completely canned product,” said Pankaj Malviya, CEO of LongJump, of his company’s platform play. “If a service provider were to try to build what we can provide for them, it would take years. That’s our story: They can operate a single platform and build very powerful apps that they can offer individually but also are designed to talk with one another.”

In the end, it makes perfect sense. Service providers are the keepers of the pipes. As their business becomes more commoditized, they need to differentiate their services and take on a more value-added reseller role.

Technorati Tags: asp, carriers, cloud computing, jamcracker, PaaS, saas, service providers, singtel

We have heard from dozens of IT organizations charged with building web-based business applications for their constituents that meeting all of their needs is simply not possible. This is why IT silos and rogue/situational applications occur. LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya discussed this in The Long Tail of IT.

Yet many CIOs have yet to wake up to new ways to provide greater services while also lowering costs. The answer is to get your head in the cloud.

According to Goldman Sachs in their July 2008 IT Sales Opportunity survey of 100 CIOs, less than 2% of them said cloud computing was a priority. In fact, it was ranked last in a series of initiatives. Instead, their approach is to cut rather than invest modestly in these flexible services.

In an increasingly competitive business environment and with the emergence of cloud computing and its off shoot, platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions, these CIOs seem to be missing a bigger picture.

That’s because PaaS offers businesses a very demonstrable ROI while also strengthening operations an organization. Both these factors should have CIOs taking a closer look at PaaS not only for its economic benefits, but as an opportunity to improve information management and processes across the enterprise.

PaaS can add significant value to enterprise IT by enabling CIOs to better serve the business, operate at a more strategic level with business divisions and rapidly deliver application solutions to business partners. PaaS also provides a modest-cost approach to cloud computing that doesn’t require infrastructure procurement, datacenter overhead, and minimizes risk.

LongJump believes that PaaS can provide an economy of scale savings to businesses’ application initiatives immediately and in the long run. At the same time, organizations can improve their maturity level, delivery a greater breadth of services, and have more control over their information.

For more information about the economics of PaaS and Cloud Computing, I invite you to read our whitepaper: “PaaS-onomics: A CIO’s Guide to using Platform-as-a-Service to Lower Costs of Application Initiatives While Improving the Business Value of IT.“

Technorati Tags: cio, cloud computing, economics, goldman sachs, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

Software vendors throw around the term “enterprise” quite a bit, and while LongJump is no different, for us, the term has a real meaning. For our applications (everything from our CRM solutions to our Employee Manager) and our Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), LongJump truly supports the notion of an enterprise: a business or organization that features multiple departments.

This is critical to understanding the depth of our platform, including our built-in team and role permission management system that offers enterprise-grade security to our highly extensible application interface. Our business model was built with enterprises of all sizes in mind. From the 10- to 20-person startup to the 20,000 Fortune 500 company, we’ve tried to maintain a critical balance between functionality and affordability because in the end, both spectrums have a thirst for both. The small company is going to need powerful tools if it hopes to grow and a Fortune 500 company is going to mature, deep functionality at an economy-of-scale to support all their constituents.

Obviously SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and PaaS solutions provide that immediate time-to-value. You’re up and running on a complete platform and application space literally in seconds. Your team just logs in and is ready to start working. But certainly there are concerns, as indicated by J. David Lashar in The Hidden Cost of SaaS. Lashar states:

The relatively limited scope for configuring or customizing a SaaS initiative makes for low-cost, fast-paced implementation. However, this limited scope and implementation may not support the requirements, may not include the automations, and may not generate the intelligence (i.e., reports and dashboards) that are critical to the business. In other words, SaaS may actually impede the ability to realize full entitlement to CRM value. The cost is not a direct cost, but rather an opportunity cost in terms of lost CRM benefits, at least for enterprise-scale organizations that can afford on-premise solutions and might therefore be able to achieve greater CRM benefits from the greater functionality available from those solutions.

Certainly it is true that many SaaS CRM providers (and even on-premise CRM providers) have a limited scope in their ability to draw from enterprise sources and connect to the entirety of operations within a business. One reason is that those tools are often left to only certain members of the team. Others have to fend for themselves because of the cost of adding them as users. That’s why a platform strategy is critical, because platforms are extensible and designed to connect multiple applications and multiple departments. The economy of scale allows for a greater reach across the entire enterprise.

For example, LongJump’s SOAP Web Services API provides a direct connection point to a variety of web systems and is key to understanding how even on-demand applications contribute to the enterprise. Many SOA initiatives are locked into exchanging information across certain systems. Rarely do end-users see the benefit to help streamline their processes or analysis.

At LongJump we really believe that if you’re going to implement a PaaS solution, and you expect it to be wide-ranging enough within your multi-departmental enterprise, it needs to be truly affordable today as well as tomorrow.

This means supporting a complete enterprise view for everyone in the organization, not just a priviledged few.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, enterprise, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, soa, software-as-a-service

LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya wrote an article on the “Seven Key Requirements Corporate IT Needs from PaaS” for TechCrunchIT and it was featured today.

In it, Pankaj discusses how cloud computing initiatives are gaining momentum with businesses of all sizes, particularly with enterprises that are looking to adopt the right solutions to address their ongoing business and IT challenges. He also discussed the broad range of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings that enterprise business and IT units are examining more thoroughly as a direct evolution of SaaS-based, single-discipline solutions that are targeted toward the horizontal enterprise.

These seven requirements for PaaS are what we have been hearing from LongJump customers when they are evaluating the right solution. Specifically, enterprise IT departments that PaaS will surely impact.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, enterprise, PaaS, pankaj malviya, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, software-as-a-service, techcrunch

LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya was a featured guest on the PricewaterhouseCoopers Start Up Show hosted by Steve Bengston September 25th. Pankaj and Steve discussed how Platform-as-a-Service as an organizational application development platform and the future of cloud computing can help businesses improve their IT services.

He talked about the need for PaaS, benefits, state of the industry and market, implementation, what applications work best in the PaaS model, and the future worldwide adoption of PaaS.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

Martin Heller of Infoworld comments in “Cloud application builder adds development suite” :

“From what I saw in the demo, however, any Java/JSP developer should be able to become productive with LongJump fairly quickly, and the pre-built relational objects provided should make quick work of many common applications.”

 Sarah Perez of Readwriteweb.com writes in “LongJump Extends Itself With New Developer Suite” :

With the new LongJump Development Suite, an I.T. department can build the app they need, then use the included visual browser-based UI for data and process modeling. Alternately, they could instead choose to hand of the integration of the app with another system or application to a developer (or team of developers). Finding a developer to work with LongJump shouldn’t be an issue since the suite provided is a Java-based development environment complete with a plug-in to the Eclipse IDE (Integrated Development Environment), something that’s used by 69% of Java developers today.

Svetlana Gladkova of Profy.com remarks in “LongJump Further Enhances Its PaaS Offerings to Developers” :

“…the fact that all the development and deployment are conducted online on LongJump platform means significant cost reduction for a business that can not afford the traditional infrastructure to run a business application on its own (while it is possible to ensure hosting of the applications elsewhere as well).”

Bob Thompson from CustomerThink Corp. remarks in “Jumping Into Cloud Computing Platform War: LongJump” :

“From a demo I saw, it seems developers can easily create custom applications, using a combination of data objects, workflow, business rules, etc. And custom Java code if you need it. I can envision developers creating fairly complex applications in a few days, and deploying immediately via the cloud.

From a technology standpoint, I’d say LongJump is on a par with Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform. Both are powerful and built to support enterprise-grade applications.”

He goes on to say…

“LongJump strikes me as one of the real gems in the cloud computing market. Assuming it can execute its marketing strategy well, I think it will attract developers who like the robust platform, easy-to-use interface and standard Java code for customizations.”

Finally, Mark Hendrickson from Techcrunch observes in “LongJump Challenges Force.com with New Developer Suite” :

“LongJump will provide a sandbox area for developers to test their Java applications before deploying them into production. The platform also implements a reusable relational data object model that’s intended to save you time recoding when developing several applications.”

We’d love to hear from you if you have additional feedback on our Developer Suite.
 

Technorati Tags: Applications, cloud computing, java, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

Sunnyvale, CA, Monday, September 22, 2008 – LongJump, a leading Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider, today unveiled its LongJump Development Suite for developers eager to exploit the business opportunities and advantages of Internet-based application development and delivery. LongJump’s developer suite reflects the growing interest in cloud computing, which Gartner named one of the top ten strategic technologies for 2008, noting that web platforms are emerging to provide service-based access to infrastructure services, information, applications, and business processes through cloud computing environments. Merrill Lynch predicts that within the next five years, the annual global market for cloud computing will swell to $95 billion.

While LongJump has already enabled businesses to harness a feature-rich platform to rapidly prototype and run multiple new applications without coding, this new offering provides advanced capabilities for developers with a Java-based set of tools to develop applications at the code level, allowing almost limitless enhancements and extensibility — all within a PaaS environment.

“Platform-as-a-Service is not only real; it is inevitable. For LongJump, capturing the hearts of developers and businesses alike means incorporating industry standard tools, building a full-featured enterprise-level platform, and reducing the time it takes to complete application projects,” stated Pankaj Malviya, LongJump’s founder and CEO. “LongJump’s PaaS offering brings a unique approach to eliminating the costs, complexity and repetition inherent in developing and deploying business applications.”

Platform-as-a-Service Emerging as Cost-Effective Cloud Computing

Traditionally, businesses that needed flexible applications would need to buy, build, and maintain a complex architecture of servers, databases, application frameworks and solution design. The PaaS model provides developers and enterprise IT teams with a more cost-effective way to extend or build custom applications. With LongJump, businesses can benefit from significant “time-to-value” and ongoing adaptability since they can bypass the need to recreate common business data models, processes and functions. That, coupled with an on-demand, web-based platform, makes PaaS the ideal platform for a range of business critical applications and situational applications that often exceed the budgets and commitment businesses can provide.

Standards-Based Approach Shortens Time to Market

Unlike most PaaS providers offering platforms that rely on proprietary code and languages to build hosted applications in the cloud, LongJump has opted for a standards-based approach by leveraging a Java-based development environment complete with a plug-in to the Eclipse IDE (Integrated Development Environment), used by 69% of Java developers, according to BZ Research. 

“Many have tried to distill the definition of PaaS to its most essential elements, but nearly everyone emphasizes flexibility and customizability relative to SaaS and ease of deployment relative to custom-built software. End-users prize SaaS applications for their universal accessibility, high degree of reliability and convenient pricing. These applications, however, are still packaged functions at their core and cannot always be fully customized for an enterprise’s internal purposes. PaaS products attempt to win on customizability by providing users with a hosted palette of components that can be assembled as needed into business applications.” noted enterprise software analyst Vishwanath Venugopalan, of The 451 Group, a technology industry analyst firm, in a recent report. “Relative to custom software built and deployed in-house, PaaS offerings attract user interest for ease of deployment and reduced time to market.”

LongJump’s PaaS offering enables the use of customizable, reusable application “Building Blocks” including objects, scripts, component extensions, business logic, data policies, and workflows that greatly improve the speed of application development and sharing of data across applications. Once data models and processes are created by either clicking or coding, these building blocks can be reused across the platform to serve a variety of business needs. For example, a single contract object and its records can be created and reused by business teams such as sales, business development, compliance, legal, and finance by simply modifying data policies and workflows.

The new LongJump Development Suite includes a visual browser-based UI for data and process modeling as well as advanced coding and scripting features for developers who are familiar with Java, so they can enhance and extend applications or completely create new data models and processes from scratch. Additionally, LongJump provides a set of web service integration points using SOAP and RESTful APIs to seamlessly connect to external systems or platforms. When LongJump Objects are extended, those fields are immediately available for integration with SOAP and REST APIs, workflow processes, and the built-in report creation wizard. 

Key features in LongJump’s Development Suite include:

Industry Standard Tools and Plug-Ins

• All coding is done in Java, JSP and HTML-based code
• AJAX library and data model definitions and usage enable developers to reuse existing LongJump functions and UI
• Plug-in available for Eclipse IDE

Extensive Customization to Business Building Blocks

• Custom actionable data definitions provide the ability to manipulate data as needed or launch custom processes
• Custom component definitions provide the ability to define reusable components
• Custom Java class definitions enable defining and reusing classes across the platform
• Custom page definitions make completely unique UI experiences available to use within internal web tabs and via custom actions

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and RESTful Web Services

• APIs support both SOAP message responses over HTTP/HTTPS and custom Java-bean scripting
• APIs can trigger workflow processes using SOAP and RESTful web services
• Inbound and outbound SOAP messaging support to connect to external systems
• Update of existing RESTful web services API for data integration with external systems

Free to Existing Customers / Free Trial Usage Available

The LongJump Development Suite is available immediately and is a free upgrade for existing users of the platform. LongJump is currently offering a free 30-day evaluation here: www.longjump.com/devsuite.

About LongJump

Based in Sunnyvale, California, LongJump is a service of Relationals Inc., a privately-held, proven provider of on-demand CRM and SFA business applications to more than 150 enterprise companies. LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and catalog of highly customizable, business applications help companies reduces the time and cost of developing and delivering data-driven applications. Its business building blocks let developers and corporate IT teams gain significant time-to-value, since they can bypass the need to repeatedly recreate common business processes and functions. LongJump is the first platform-as-a-service provider to bring robust customization, integration, and powerful functionality to businesses of all sizes, enabling them to quickly design, implement and do further customization in an easy, affordable way. For more information, visit www.longjump.com or call 800.886.9028.

Editor’s Note: The 451 Group’s report, “Built to order: what’s next for the platform-as-a-service market?” referenced above, is an independently-produced report that was neither sponsored by nor otherwise funded directly by LongJump. The report and its contents are the sole property of The 451 Group, copyright 2008, and are reproduced here by permission. The report is available at www.the451group.com.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, developers, eclipse plug-in, java, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, rest, soap, the 451 group

• Basic concepts of PaaS, e.g. benefits, technology, potential risks and hurdles, etc.
• Applications suitable for PaaS
• Roadmap for successful adoption and integration
• Q&A

Date:
Wed., Sept. 24, 2008

Time:
8am Pacific Time
11am Eastern Time

Duration:
1 hour

Speaker:
Derek Cheng,
Director of Products and Marketing,
LongJump

To register:
http://www.longjump.com/paas-webinar/land/paas-webinar-sep08.htm

Technorati Tags: Applications, cloud computing, PaaS, Web2.0

The panel discussed how PaaS addresses the Long Tail of IT applications where vendors like Oracle, SAP are not focusing. IT, despite being resource constrained, can still provide the business with these apps using PaaS and still have enterprise levels of integration across their other applications and databases. Additionally, the panel also talked about their respective approaches to convincing developers on using their platforms either via leveraging Java and established database design skills or more proprietary languages like APEX (Force.com) that is similar to Java and C#.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, PaaS, saas

Below is the complete article:

The Long Tail of IT
Pankaj Malviya, June 25, 2008

Everyone who has worked in — or even with — an IT department knows that the demand for projects always exceeds IT’s ability to deliver them all. IT is able to address only those most highly prioritized, core business projects that receive the budget, staff and priority to develop, test, deliver and maintain over time. If projects don’t make the “A” list, the project either doesn’t get done or workers have to find a way to do it themselves.

Today’s more tech-savvy, Web 2.0 workforce has increasingly resorted to getting the tools it needs from SaaS software providers. In an ideal world, IT must be an active partner in prescribing technology to help the rest of the business work better together, move information efficiently, and get the answers needed to make the next strategic or tactical decisions. This is what the Long Tail of IT is all about: really important IT automation projects that would help the business but that consistently don’t make the list of must-do projects.

The platform-as-a-service evolution that is starting to emerge (for example, with solutions from Amazon, Google and LongJump) is one that has potential to restore the luster of the IT department, because these solutions are focused on delivering “customized, situational applications” that connect to a range of common and uncommon processes.

Platform-as-a-service provides a turnkey environment to build applications that teams can use to share data and collaborate. There is no infrastructure to install, and the time and cost to build, deploy and customize new applications is greatly reduced.

PaaS solutions should also be able to integrate with other sources of data using simple web-services APIs. Connecting to enterprise data sources securely is fundamental. Additionally, customization is extremely important; applications that are created must meet the unique requirements of businesses. PaaS should provide a visual way to create new forms, model and automate processes and workflows, and implement actionable data policies.

Rather than needing to work with a one-size-fits-all application (and an extensive, dedicated IT architecture), PaaS platforms need to be able to draw from functional domain experts from Marketing to Sales to HR to easily customize applications, or quickly create and publish situational applications, that are better suited to their unique business requirements. The PaaS platforms also need to deliver enterprise-level service, security, and hardware and software architecture, as well as rich functionality for each application, ranging from configurable dashboard widgets to a flexible database architecture that enables extensive relationships between application data, search capabilities across all applications, etc.

PaaS’ rise is built upon need. The fact that PaaS is on demand and in the cloud is driven by the reality that IT isn’t able to support its multi-departmental constituents with a flexible business platform of information and collaboration. Information workers don’t have time to build a server, manage a database, design a UI, etc. PaaS offers a convenient, predictable, leverageable alternative to yesterday’s big IT initiatives.

That doesn’t mean IT is off the hook, however. In fact, PaaS needs IT to succeed. Not just to bless the technology around security and scalability issues, but to be the guiding light of information management:

• How do you organize your data permissions?
• What data needs to connect to other data to form applications?
• Do the new applications meet required compliance standards for users’ data protection? What should that data and application look like?
• How much is customer-facing, and how much is back-end?
• What external systems need to connect to this data?

PaaS gives IT something it never had: the ability to manage the ‘I’ without the need for too much ‘T.’ No hardware to install; no database to optimize; no web servers to update. PaaS provides structured, centralized data and processes that are enterprise-agnostic. The focus is then realigned on the applications one can build and the business problems one can solve, not on the technology that built them.

Pankaj Malviya is the Founder & CEO of LongJump.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, GigaOm, IT department, on-demand, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

It’s very clear that the infrustructure of web products and components is starting to consolidate into ready-to-go solutions from hosting, applications, and (like LongJump) complete enterprise application development plaforms.

According to Om Malik:

The platforms on which we have done business for over a decade are starting to provide diminishing returns; the smart money, meanwhile, is seeking new platform structures.

We completely agree with Om’s assessment. The time is certainly right for Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions like LongJump. With functionality on the web ever improving, the need to drive down operational costs always looming, the agility of a business a paramount importance, it’s only a matter of time for enterprises large and small to move some key areas of their business on the grid.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, GigaOm, IT department, on-demand, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas